From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,1efdd369be089610 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Thread: 1025b4,1d8ab55e71d08f3d X-Google-Attributes: gid1025b4,public From: dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) Subject: Re: what DOES the GPL really say? Date: 1997/08/16 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 264582253 References: <5ph4g5$sbs$1@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu> <5pim4l$5m3$1@news.nyu.edu> <5ptv7r$4e2$1@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu> <5pu5va$64o$1@news.nyu.edu> <5qdof6$iav$1@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu> <33D6FA2B.9B7@ix.netcom.com> <33E00855.2BA7@ix.netcom.com> Organization: New York University Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,gnu.misc.discuss Date: 1997-08-16T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Ronald Cole says <> As has been explained before, and as I think most people except Ronald Cole perfectly well understand, the situation is as follows. We ask people receiving wavefront versions to refrain from distributing them, because it is actively unhelpful to the GNAT project and to the development and use of GNAT (both by customers and by unsupported users) to have versions floating around that have not gone through the kind of field testing that we insist on for public release. A wavefront version is a temporary release that is made for the purpose of solving a particular customers problem. We do not promise at any point to make such wavefront versions available -- indeed both from our point of view and from the point of view of most of our customers, it is better to figure out workarounds rather than be constantly using new versions of the compiler that have not been field tested -- by their nature wavefront versions cannot be thoroughly tested (or they would become real releases suitable for general release). If people started distributing wavefront versions freely, then w would probably reluctantly decide to stop making them available, since it would be clear that their distribution was harmful. That would be too bad for the cases where they really solve a problem. But as I said, this is a very small part of our support activity anyway (sending out wavefront releases). So if we did decide to curtail the distribution of wavefront release because of problems with uncontrolled releases, then this would be nothing like "refusing to do business with people" or anything like that. it would just be a matter of balancing the needs of customers in certain situations with other needs, something we have to do all the time. One important point here to realize is that sometimes we will send out wavefronts that we know have a flaw, that will not affect the current use. For example, we may know that a recent change has broken the COBOL interface, but if we know a given customer is not using the COBOL interface, then the wavefornt may still be useful. But of course general distribution of that wavefront would most definitely be harmful. The situation with GNAT is very much like that with the GCC snapshots. The GNU project strongly discourages people from distributing the snapshots for exactly the same reasons I give above, and generally we don't see the snapshots being widely distributed, and that is definitely a good thing. The point here is to aim at effective quality-controlled release management for GNAT. The fact that GNAT is free software means that some restrictions that could be achieved with contractual instruments for propietary software cannot be achieved this way for GNAT. But in practice that is not a problem. The GNAT user community in general understands I think quite well what our goals are here, and cooperates not because there is some lawyer threatening them with dire penalties, but because they want to help the GNAT project. That we do not have dozens of wavefront versions of GNAT in various unknown states floating around the net, causing mass confusion, testifies to this. There is, as Richard Kenner, points out a huge difference between illegal and impolite or uncooperative. This distinction seems to be lost on Ronald, but I think the rest of the community understands it. Robert Dewar Ada Core Technologies